By the time he got there, the other murderer had very thoroughly stolen his thunder. Soldiers were shouting to people to get back and get home, while other soldiers tried to open a path for what was left of the procession, carrying Hadd’s body. More soldiers were in and out of the house where the screaming girls were. The place was full of groups of people hurrying purposefully this way and that, in uniform, in Festival dress, or in holiday best. The result was utter confusion. The only thing which did not seem to be happening, Mitt thought bitterly, was the revolution the Free Holanders had confidently expected once Hadd was dead.
Mitt shrugged. For lack of any better plan, he did as he used to do three years back and joined a hurrying group of total strangers. With them, he was swept right across the waterfront to the other side of the harbor. And when we’re there, I bet we hurry all the way back again, he thought.
He was right. An officer stopped them near the harbor wall. “Only authorized persons past this spot.”
Mitt’s group obediently turned away. “Alham must have gone up Fishmarket then,” someone said, in a worried, busy voice, and they all set off again in the opposite direction.
Mitt lagged and let them hurry away. He could see the masts of the smaller boats from here, sawing the sky as heavy soldiers jumped from one to another, hunting the murderer. Even the masts of the big ships were swaying sedately, so many were the soldiers searching them. A group of seamen who had been on the ships were being herded and prodded roughly along the harbor wall. They’ll catch him all right, Mitt thought resentfully!
A new group of people surged up beside him.
These were clearly important. They were officers in braid, well-nourished men in good cloth, with, in their midst, a tall, thin man with a pale jagged profile. The man’s clothes had a wonderful sober richness. Mitt saw the sleek glint of velvet, and fur, and the flicker of jewels, worn where they did not show, because the man was too used to having them to bother with their value. Mitt knew that pale, jutting face, though he had never, to his knowledge, seen the fellow before. It had the same bad-tempered lines as Hadd’s. The nose was the one he had whirled his rattle under. The rest of the features were like the ones he had seen advancing on him behind Libby Beer to kick the bomb away. This could only be Harchad.
Proper flinty flake off the old block, he is, Mitt thought, looking up at him with interest. Wearing six farms and ten years’ fishing on his back, and he don’t care!
“Oh, stop bleating, man!” Harchad snapped at the man with the most braid. “Those seamen are to be questioned till we get something. I don’t care if you kill them all. And I want the brat who threw the bomb, too. He was obviously an accomplice. I want him brought to me when you find him.”
Mitt’s stomach, for the first time in his life, gave a cold little jolt. He lowered his eyes from Harchad’s face and gently backed away. Wonder how he’d look if he knew I was right beside him, he thought. Accomplice, was I? O flaming Ammet! I think everything’s gone wrong. He tiptoed hurriedly sideways to join the nearest group of hurry ing citizens.
The man in braid shouted. “There he is now! That’s him!”
“Who?”
“The brat who threw that bomb.”
Mitt had the merest glimpse of them all staring at him. Harchad’s face jutted out of the rest in a way that dried Mitt’s mouth, tongue and all, and almost wrung a scream out of him. It was as horrible as his nightmares about Canden. He turned and ran, mindlessly. His only idea was to make his legs go faster than their fastest. He had to get away from the gathering shouts behind him. He had to escape from that face. He shot across the water-front, not knowing whether he hit people or avoided them as he ran. He dived into the nearest road and ran there for all he was worth. It filled with banging feet behind him. Mitt ran harder still, turned a corner and ran, and ran again, and went on running. The only thing in his mind was the shouting and ringing feet behind him, and he did not stop running until they had grown faint and died away.
When his breath came back, he wandered wearily round a corner into the next street. He was deeply ashamed of himself. What had got into him? What had made him, the free soul, fearless Mitt, who had never turned a hair during, all the errands he had run for the Free Holanders— what had possessed him—to panic at the mere sight of Harchad and run away? Mitt could not understand it. What had made everything go so wrong?
“Here, love. Have hold of this and cheer up.”
Mitt looked up to find himself in an airy, respectable street, quite some way above the waterfront. It was full of handsomely painted houses. Mitt dimly remembered the one just up the hill from him, with the double gable and the two stiff figures painted on it. The street was full of quiet, cheerful people in respectable holiday clothes, who were buying things at the stalls which lined the street. It did not seem as if a whisper of the events at the harbor had reached this far. All was peace and sober enjoyment.
The person who had spoken to Mitt was a woman behind one of the stalls. She was leaning forward across rows of little Ammets and Libbys, holding a toffee apple out toward Mitt. She smiled when he looked, and waggled the apple invitingly on its stick. “Here. Take this for luck. Your face is as long as Flate Dike, my love.”
Mitt did his best to grin. Running had filled his mouth with thick, bitter juice. He did not want a toffee apple. But he could see the woman meant to be kind. “Oh, no, thanks, lady. I just lost a lifetime’s work, see, and I’m off my food a bit.”
“Well, then, you need an appetiser,” said the woman, and she tried to push the toffee apple into Mitt’s hand.
Mitt found he really could not bear the thought of sticky toffee and sour apple, and he backed away. “No, thanks, lady. Honest. Much obliged.”
“Please yourself,” she said. “But I’ve got to give you something now I’ve started, or it’s bad luck for both of us. Here.” She picked up one of the little images of Libby Beer from the line on the front of the stall and held her out to Mitt. “You can have her then. I’m just clearing up to go, anyway.” Mitt did not know if the woman really wanted luck or if she was simply trying to cheer him up, but he took the little image and tried to grin again. “And don’t try eating her. She’s made of wax,” said the woman. “The year’s luck to you.”
“Luck to you, ship and shore,” Mitt said politely, just as he should. He wandered on down the street, clutching the knobby little figure and wondering what to do with it. Perhaps I could make Harchad a present of her, he thought.
He was three stalls lower down when boots hammered on the flagway behind him. Six soldiers with an officer at their head swung round the corner the way Mitt had come and halted by the woman’s stall. “Hey, you. Anyone. Seen a boy in Festival breeches, no jacket, very skinny?”
The sober respectable hum in the street died away completely. Nobody moved. Mitt froze, bending over the stall beside him, pretending to look at little Ammets. He tried to will himself to make a dash down the street and bring the soldiers after him. But there was no question of that, somehow. He could only wait for the woman who had given him Libby Beer to give him away.
“Yes, indeed, I have seen him, sir,” she said. “Just this minute. I offered him a toffee apple, and he went away down the street.”
The soldiers nodded and came on down the street.
Mitt stood with a bright imitation Libby Beer in one hand and the other stretched out to touch the plaited corn of an Ammet and still could not move. He did not blame the woman. Other people had seen her talking to Mitt, and she dared not deny it. In the old days it used to make him amused and rather scornful, the way even respectable people like these went in dread of Harchad’s soldiers. It made him think he must be the only free soul in Holand. But now he did not seem to be a free soul any longer. He dared not move. He had to stand there till the soldiers saw him.